Yankees ace Gerrit Cole threw off a mound Saturday morning for the first time since being shut down in mid-March, checking off another box in his road back from an elbow injury.

Cole took the mound in the Yankees' bullpen at 10:40 a.m., hours before New York took on the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium. He said he threw 15 pitches, 13 for strikes and all fastballs. He said the pitches averaged 89 mph.

"It was exciting," Cole said. "This was a good day for me. I was fired up."

Aaron Judge has accomplished plenty during his nine-year major league career. The five-time All-Star set the American League record for home runs in a season in 2022. He won the AL MVP award. He was named the 16th captain in New York Yankees history.

And not once in his first 869 career games was the 32-year-old slugger ever ejected.

That streak, though, ended Saturday at Yankee Stadium.

Judge was tossed for the first time leading off the seventh inning after arguing a called third strike in the Yankees' eventual 5-3 win over the Detroit Tigers. 

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole is scheduled to throw off a mound Saturday for the first time since getting injured in spring training.

"Whether that's a full bullpen or what exactly that looks like, we'll see," New York manager Aaron Boone said before Friday night's game against Detroit. "I think it's gone well so far, his build-up and checking the boxes and the level of intensity of throwing and things like that. So far, so good. Getting off the mound will obviously be another step."

Aaron Judge is struggling offensively, something that could lead the New York Yankees to flip Judge and Juan Soto in the batting order.

Soto has hit second every single game this season and is slashing .331/.441/.589 while Judge has been in the three-hole every single game and is hitting .197/.331/.393. 

When asked about shuffling the order, Aaron Boone said: "We'll see."

Despite Judge's struggles, the Yankees are 20-12 this season.

Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani has broken Hideki Matsui's record for the most homers hit by a Japanese-born player in Major League Baseball.

Ohtani crushed a two-run homer deep into the right-field bleachers off Adrian Houser of the New York Mets in the third inning of L.A.'s 10-0 win Sunday at Dodger Stadium.

The homer was the 176th of Ohtani's six-plus seasons in the majors. That's one more than Matsui, the former New York Yankees slugger who played the final 10 seasons of his 20-year pro career in North America.

Aaron Judge struck out four times in four at-bats in the Yankees' 2-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday, and he heard it from the home crowd.

The former MVP was booed at Yankee Stadium after striking out on four pitches in the ninth inning with the game scoreless. The four-strikeout performance prolonged a slow start for Judge, who is batting .179 with a .682 on-base plus slugging percentage in 21 games this season.

"I've heard worse," Judge said, "and I'd probably be doing the same thing in this situation."

John Sterling's time as the voice of the New York Yankees, a memorable 36-year run to conclude a 64-year career, officially ended Saturday at Yankee Stadium.

Sterling took the field for a pregame ceremony with his family to a roll call that spread from the right-field bleachers to the rest of the ballpark. He received video messages from former Yankees greats Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Paul O'Neill. He was presented with gifts, including an 83-inch television and a Yankees home jersey with the number 5631 -- the total number of Yankees games he called on the radio.

John Sterling, the longtime radio voice of the New York Yankees, has decided to retire, effective immediately, the club announced Monday.

Sterling, 85, joined the Yankees' broadcast in 1989. He went on to call 5,420 regular-season and 211 postseason Yankees games. Sterling had taken on a reduced role in recent seasons and traveled less often because of health concerns. This season was his 36th in the booth and 20th working alongside Suzyn Waldman.

Gerrit Cole threw a baseball on Monday for the first time in four weeks.

The catch session, the first of three scheduled this week, represented an important checkpoint in Cole's recovery from nerve inflammation in his right elbow that will sideline him at least until late May.

Cole is one of several prominent pitchers to sustain a major arm injury since teams reported for spring training in February.

The recent surge was unnerving enough for Tony Clark, the Major League Baseball Players Association executive director, to release a statement Saturday blaming the increase in elbow injuries on the pitch clock.

Major League Baseball responded with its own statement, dismissing Clark's thesis, pointing to the rise of pitcher injuries in recent decades, long before the pitch clock was enforced.

Cole addressed the surge of injuries and the ensuing exchange between the parties, saying he was "disheartened" by the back-and-forth.

"I'm just frustrated it's a combative issue," the New York Yankees' ace said. "It's like, 'OK, we have divorced parents and the child's misbehaving and we can't get on the same page to get the child to behave.' Not that the players are misbehaving, but we have an issue here and we need to get on the same page to at least try and fix it."

New York Yankees ace right-hander Gerrit Cole will start playing catch this week as he continues to rehab his ailing right elbow.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone told reporters Sunday that Cole could begin throwing Monday or Tuesday.

The team placed Cole on the 60-day injured list prior to Opening Day due to nerve inflammation in the elbow. Cole would be eligible to return May 27.